Fixations on Facebook

If your company is facing tight margins and low profitability, as many are now, then how can you accept any work distractions that drain your overall productivity?

- Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of research for Nucleus Research, an internet technology research firm

In Sharon Gaudin, "Facebook Use Cuts Productivity at Work," Computerworld, July 22, 2009

In a survey of 237 employees of companies that don't restrict Facebook in the workplace, Nucleus found that 77% do in fact use it during work hours. 87% of those said they had no clear business reason for using the site. Separately, an Ohio State University found that "college students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grades than students who don't use the popular social networking site."

You would think that these findings along with Nielsen’s assertion that “people spend more time on Facebook than any on other Web site” would make Facebook by far the wealthiest place on the web (maybe on the planet) from advertising money. That spot still belongs to Google, for interesting reasons. One of them is that advertisers worry that people are blind to ads when using social media. In that connection, an advertising executive at a conference asked rhetorically why anyone would want to see an ad when she was composing a note breaking up with her boyfriend.